


like silence but not empty

by Princex_N



Category: Lazer Team (2015)
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Bullying, Disability, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insecurity, Intellectual Disability, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Team as Family, r-slur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 02:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11348046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Woody has never really done anything on pace with other kids.A look at the life and times of Woodrow "Woody" Johnson.





	like silence but not empty

**Author's Note:**

> I could keep writing and rewriting this fic forever i think, but like, yolo

Woody has never really done anything on pace with other kids. 

He's always been slower; days, weeks, months, years behind the kids his age. His mother tries not to feel things like "Disappointment" as she watches her child struggle to do things that seem to come easily to her friends' children, but oftentimes she fails, and does anyway. 

(It doesn't help that her friends sometimes talk about it, their voices stained with pity and humor in equal measure as she stands to the side and pretends not to hear.) 

Woody tries his best, and his mom tries to help him  _get things_ , but Woody just isn't very good at doing things, and so she doesn't protest much when one of the school counselors suggests that they wait an extra year before putting Woody in school. 

So the other kids go to school, and Woody stays home and does his best. But the year passes and he still can't get his shirts on right side out most days, and it always takes him too long to put his shoes on because he always gets the left and right mixed up - often more than once. He's always chattering away happily, about everything and nothing, but his words are still always garbled and stuttered out in fractured sentences that most people don't have the patience to actually listen to. His mom tells him to slow down and think about what he wants to say before he says it, but Woody's not great at remembering to do this most of the time. 

His mom puts him in school anyway, and when class starts it turns out that he's not great at things like reading or writing or math either. 

"Just be patient," his teacher recommends to his mom, whose hand rests too tightly on Woody's shoulder at the first of many parent-teacher conferences, "Some kids are just slower than others." 

But Woody is slower than  _all_ of the others.

His teacher tries to help him out during the day, but she doesn't have enough time to spend with him when there are other students in the class who she needs to pay attention to.

A couple of other kids help by watching over Woody's shoulder as he works and correcting him whenever he messes up, which is often. He accepts the help gratefully, but eventually the teacher tells the other kids to stop, because if they spend their time helping Woody, they won't have time to do their own work. Woody gets relocated to a desk where he can't "be a distraction", and he doesn't mind too much, but he's still struggling to keep up, and it gets worse without the help.

His mom tries to help him out after school, trying to be patient as she explains concepts and corrects the way he holds his pencil again and again, but patience doesn't come naturally to her, and most of these sessions end in tears, either hers or Woody's.

"Never seen a kid slow as that one," someone comments when they're at church one Sunday, and Woody is fussing with his jacket because there's  _something_ wrong with how he's got it on, he can tell, he just can't figure out how to fix it. 

"This isn't a joke, Woody," his mom hisses when she hears what the others are saying, and sees Woody waving cheerfully at them with his jacket hanging limply off of his arms. She stoops down to twist him around and yank his arms roughly through the right holes and button it up for him. "Quit playing around." 

Woody wants to explain that he isn't messing around, that he is trying his best, but sometimes his limbs go all stiff and his body doesn't move the way he wants it to. He wants to explain that sometimes he just gets confused, because sometimes it's like the things around him go faster than Woody can go, and he just keeps getting left behind. 

He doesn't say any of that though, because words don't really work how Woody needs them to any more than his body does, and his mom is upset (Woody's not great at recognizing how other people are feeling most of the time, but he is getting good at noticing that one), so instead he just smiles at her and says, "Yes ma'am," because being polite is important and smiling at people is good. When you smile at people, they smile back, and if someone is smiling, that means they're not upset. 

Woody figures out pretty quickly that sometimes people _do_ smile even though they're upset. Woody himself spends a lot of time smiling, after all. 

"Well, he's one of the most cheerful kids I've ever met," one of his mom's friends says to her, voice soft and hesitant. Woody's mom makes a noncommittal grunt in response, and Woody's smile doesn't falter. 

He's pretty cheerful and easygoing most of the time, but he also spends a lot of time crying, because it's frustrating to not get things when you want to get them, and it's upsetting to always be getting yelled at or ignored. It's made worse by the fact that Woody doesn't really have a good way to explain  _why_ he's upset, and he's not good at calming himself down either. So he's prone to bursting into sudden bouts of tears and being unable to stop as his tiny lungs struggle to catch air as he sobs into his knees. 

Some of the kids at school laugh at him for it; words like "sissy" and "crybaby" are thrown his way often while teachers roll their eyes and ignore him. Sometimes his mom says the same things, which makes them extra true. Woody couldn't explain why those things are bad things, but he knows that they are, and so he wishes that he didn't cry so much, but he can't help it no matter how much he tries. Whether it's trying and failing to get his shoes on, or trying and failing to finish his homework, or trying and failing to keep from upsetting his mom, Woody is always crying about it. 

Not crying is another one of those things he's not good at. 

(But crying is better than getting mad about things, because when Woody gets mad he yells and sometimes throws things and breaks them. That makes people nervous, they whisper and stare even more than usual, and sometimes they grab him roughly and hold him down. Sometimes he breaks things that he likes and he doesn't get to use them anymore. Woody doesn't like crying, but he likes being angry even less.) 

The helmet enters the picture as Woody struggles his way into the second grade. He's eight years old and brimming with energy, but is no better at doing things than he used to be, including things like getting his clumsy limbs under control or watching where he's going, and so he spends a lot of time tripping or running into things. 

After the third time that Woody has to get stitches in his forehead, the doctor suggests that he get some kind of protective gear. 

"The kid doesn't have the brain cells to spare," the older man says with a smirk, and Woody watches the way his mom's face goes tight and red, the way it does a lot when people talk to her about him, and tries to figure out exactly what he'd missed this time. 

He spends a lot of time doing that. 

The kids at school seem to like the helmet more than he does. Woody likes it because it means that he doesn't get hurt or get headaches as often as he used to; the other kids seem to think it's funny. Woody doesn't mind the attention, because it's a nice step up from how everyone ignored him after their kindergarten teacher told them to, and so it's fun to be included in things again. The other kids like knocking their knuckles against the plastic and asking if anyone's home. Woody doesn't really like the noise or the reverberations of their knocking through his skull, but they seem like they're having a good time, and so he decides that he doesn't mind so much. 

"He looks ridiculous, and he's too dumb to notice," someone laughs, and Woody copies their smiles back at them and tells himself that it's okay. 

Some things  _do_ get easier as he moves up to middle school. He can read a little better, though his handwriting never really improves and he still sometimes swaps letters around when he's writing, so people don't usually bother trying to read what he's written. Math never really starts making sense, but science can be fun a lot of the time. He still gets confused a lot, but his teacher is more patient than the other ones are, and so Woody winds up understanding more than he doesn't in that class.

He wonders why all of his classes can't be that way, but all of his science tests come back covered in red marks, and his report card grade isn't better than any of the others, and so he figures that maybe it just doesn't matter. 

Things outside of class don't really improve so much either. He tries to make friends, but after the helmet had stopped fitting and his mom hadn't wanted to get him a new one, the other kids went back to ignoring him more often than not. 

Sometimes Woody wishes that they wouldn't, but when people do pay attention to him, Woody seems to have a habit of winding up hurt. Plus, people laugh a lot when he's around and Woody doesn't really get what they're laughing at most of the time. Some of the time, though, even he can tell that they're laughing at him, in a mean way. Woody doesn't mind. He doesn't let it get to him. 

(He let it get to him once. Woody still isn't too good at controlling his emotions, and he still prefers crying to getting angry. But he had been frustrated because he hadn't understood something in class, and the teacher wouldn't even look at him, much less answer his questions. Woody had been trying to work it out for himself while he waited for his mom to pick him up after school when a group of kids just showed up and started talking while Woody was trying to focus. 

He hadn't minded too much at first, even when they knocked their knuckles against his head like they used to when he'd still had the helmet, but he still would have preferred if they'd stopped. "Use your words," his mom always said, and he had been looking for the words to ask them to please leave him alone, but he was tired and kind of scrambled, and so he couldn't find them and couldn't get his mouth to work right anyway, and so when one of the boys had grabbed Woody's notebook out of his lap and ripped it, all of that Frustration came out and boiled over into Anger, and Woody turns out to be pretty good at throwing punches. 

Someone called the cops, and all of Woody's scrawny fourteen-year-old limbs are packed into the back of a squad car by a reluctant looking man with "HAGAN" printed on his shirt. Woody sat in the back of the car and stared at his bloodied knuckles and when people outside said things like "He's stupid  _and_ dangerous," and "Kids that ain't right like that always wind up something twisted," Woody heard and swore to himself that he wasn't going to be dangerous or twisted. It's still not the last time that he rides in the back of that car, but he hasn't let himself get angry like that since the first time.) 

(He's tried to work on the "stupid" bit too, but hasn't had much luck. He figures that some things are just not meant to be and decides that realistic goals are sometimes the best.) 

Woody's gotten pretty used to being alone, so he doesn't mind much. He's used to sitting by himself and watching other people talk to each other. Sometimes he overhears people talking about parties and movies and things, but he never gets invited to any of that stuff, and thinks that's probably okay. He'd worked in the carnival one summer, and they'd put him in the dunk tank to sit "where he couldn't mess anything up". It had been fun, and the cold water had been a nice break from the heat, but he hadn't really liked the noise of the crowd all around him, so he doesn't think that he'd like any of that party stuff either. 

He doesn't get good at social conversation, but he does get good at being polite. "If you're going to be like this, you need to at least learn to be polite," his mom had said, and so Woody works on it. It's one of the few things he's good at. He likes manners and the rules of how things are supposed to go, because they're clear and easy to understand, and Woody doesn't get things wrong as much as when there are rules like that to follow. People aren't always polite to him back, but that's not what counts, so it's okay. 

He keeps trying at all the other stuff too. Woody's not really good at a lot, but he is good at trying, and so he really does give everything his all. 

But sometimes he still gets his shirts on wrong, and he never buttons up his jackets because he can never get the buttons through the holes right (or get them out of the holes if his mom buttons it for him), an he still forgets things too often, even though he's in high school now. 

His teachers pay attention to him even less than the old ones day, and Woody kind of stops being able to follow along with what's going on in those classes all together. He still goes to class because that's where he's supposed to be, and he keeps trying, but things are a lot harder than they were in the other grades, and so it doesn't matter how hard he tries, he still can't keep up. 

The teachers all say at the beginning of the semesters to raise your hand if you're confused about something or have questions, but sometimes Woody spends the entire class period with his arm raised in the air, but no one ever calls on him. 

"Quit raising your hand, moron, you're blocking the board," the girl behind him snaps one day, and Woody doesn't raise his hand anymore after that. 

He kind of gives up on the homework too, because his mom doesn't like helping him with it anymore, so he just stops all of that and starts working odd jobs instead. The football coach lets him come on as the water boy and so he does that, and wonders if he should get a new helmet to help him since he gets hit by stray footballs so much. It happens often enough that he starts to wonder if maybe it's not entirely accidental, but accidents still happen, so it can be okay. 

He's gotten good at not getting upset about stuff. He still cries, but not as often, and the only time he really gets close to Anger again is the time that a bunch of the football players corner him one day after a game and start doing things like laughing at him and pulling his hair (short in the front and long in the back, because Woody doesn't like having hair in his face but he does like having something for his hands to play with.) 

Woody is really skinny and he doesn't defend himself because he still thinks of bloody knuckles and the back of that cop car from when he was in seventh grade, and they get bored after a while, right when Woody is starting to get nervous because he isn't sure if he's going to be able to control himself for much longer. 

One of the new players on team, Woody thinks his name is Zach but isn't sure, watches from a distance as Woody picks himself up out of the dirt and pulls his jacket back on clumsily, but doesn't button it because he can't even though it's chilly, and Woody notices him and waves cheerily, but doesn't think much about it, or about how the football team mostly leaves him alone outside of games or practice after that. 

It turns out that maybe it doesn't matter much anyway, because then Woody is seventeen and sitting in a way squishy chair in a counselor's office getting told, "With your grades and records, and considering how you've already been held back some, I'm not sure if there's any point in you staying in school." 

She explains to him how it's just not "realistic", and how he's wasting people's time, including his own, when he keeps coming regardless. 

And Woody gets that realistic goals are the best, and he doesn't like disappointing people, or the thought that he's holding other people back, and so he doesn't go back to school that Fall. 

He keeps working odd jobs instead; the coach lets him keep working as the water boy when it's football season, and he rakes leaves around town, and works at the local car wash. He works as a cashier and a dishwasher and a barista, and a bunch of other jobs too, but he gets fired from all of those. 

He figures that he'll find something eventually, but some days he's not sure. 

It's not long after that when he meets Herman. 

Woody is walking around town aimlessly, because his boss had gotten upset about something and told him that he should go home early but Woody is pretty sure that his mom would get upset too if he showed up with all of that extra time, so instead he's just wandering around. It's not the first time this has happened, but this time Woody accidentally forgets to look both ways when he crosses a street, and Herman almost hits him with his car and a, "What the fuck, kid?", and then offers to give him a ride. 

Woody decides that he likes him pretty much on the spot, and since the older man doesn't ever seem to mind or get mean or mad at Woody, and never tells him to go away, Woody sticks around. Sometimes it's hard to tell, but Woody is pretty sure that Herman likes spending time with him too, so that's something. 

Herman is kind of a weird guy. He seems kind of angry or sad most of the time, and he spends a lot of time talking about the football team, but never really actually talks about why he's upset. Sometimes he laughs about how Woody isn't good at doing things, but when other people laugh at Woody, Herman gets pissed at them. Woody decides that means he's probably just teasing and not being mean. He's still not good about telling the difference, or telling if there is a difference, and maybe there isn't one except for when it's Herman. 

Overall, Herman is cool. He helps Woody sometimes, and gives him rides around town so Woody doesn't have to walk everywhere, and sometimes he lets Woody stay at his place when Woody doesn't really want to go home. 

So it all works out, since Woody's mom wants him in the house less and less and the people working with Woody get less and less patient, and Woody doesn't really have anywhere else to go except for those places. All of the free time that Woody winds up with, he spends with Herman, and things almost for once feel like they're working out and making sense. 

A couple years pass like that, and then the alien ship gets hit with a firework and Woody puts on the helmet that reminds him of his old one, and then things sort of stop and start making sense all at once. 

The helmet  _hurts_ , especially at first. It feels like one of his migraines hopped up on steroids at first, but the more time passes the more it starts to settle back into a dull sort of ache, unless he jostles his head around too much. 

He doesn't get used to much else about it that quick though. Woody wakes up the morning after putting it on and thinks, "This is what it should have been like all along," and finds that he kind of hates it. It's uncomfortable, and not just because of the headache. It makes Woody feel almost not like himself, and he doesn't really like it, or know what to think about it. 

The scientists say that the helmet is making him smarter, but Woody doesn't think that's right. It doesn't make him smarter so much as it easier for him to process things. The helmet itself holds all of the information, Woody's just sort of like a vessel for it. Sometimes the facts just fall out of his mouth without him really deciding to say any of it. Sometimes the words come out even before Woody understands what any of it even means. 

It's a little scary. Like he's not all himself, or not all in control. He doesn't know how much of him is him anymore. 

Sometimes it's the opposite though, sometimes he feels like he's even more in control of himself than he used to be. Woody doesn't cry even once after he puts the helmet on, he stops running into things and gets all of his clothes and shoes on right the first time. It makes it easier for him to think and understand what's going on around him. It makes it easier for him to talk; getting words organized and out of his mouth is easier than it ever has been before, even though the new accent is a little weird, and it's good to finally understand and be understood. 

But, it's still kind of unsettling, and sometimes kind of bad. 

Because the more time he spends around people, the more he can tell the difference between "Now" and "Before". 

He doesn't notice it much at first, because the military treats them the same way people have always treated Woody, and there's not much to notice. He only really notices it when he goes home. 

The aliens are gone, and the military gives them a chance to go see their families before they're taken back to the base. So, Woody goes home because he might as well, and his mom touches the helmet and compares it to his old one and seems surprised when he talks with the new accent, and their interactions don't seem much different from how they usually are. Woody chatters on about the things that are different now and the things that he's been up to and the things that are going to happen, and his mom sort of buy maybe doesn't listen. 

Woody doesn't think much about it at all, not until he's up in his room getting some of his things to take back to the base with him, and his helmet zeroes in on a conversation happening over the phone downstairs. 

"I thought he'd be like that forever," his mom is saying, and the person she's talking to on the phone makes a sound of agreement, "I thought that he'd have to be with me forever, and I'd have to keep taking care of him. I'm glad he's finally got all fixed up." 

And upstairs, Woody sort of falters. 

The helmet, ever helpful, analyzes some of the memories that get pulled up, and helps Woody process all of the things that he had missed before. Things like “Disappointment” and “Frustration” and “Resignation”.

And even with the helmet on, Woody can’t really figure out how he feels about all of that, and so he gets his things and goes to leave, and gets intercepted by his mom asking if he doesn’t want to stay a bit longer?

Woody thinks about how she always wanted him out of the house and never really wanted him around too much, and Woody looks at her and realizes that she likes him better than she had before, and says, "No, they're expecting me back," and leaves without saying goodbye like he usually does before she can say anything in response. 

He starts walking back to the base, because he still can't drive or anything but he doesn't want to sit around there and wait, and he gets picked up along the way instead by Herman and Hagan. Woody gets in the back seat even though he usually sits in the front, and can't really come up with anything to talk about, but figures it's okay since the others are quiet too. 

They pick up Zach too, standing mulishly at the end of his driveway, and the helmet notes that Zach has bruises that he hadn't before, but Woody doesn't say anything about them because he gets that, and he's still a little distracted. 

He doesn't really want to dwell on what had happened at his house, because he doesn't want to spend too much time thinking about negative things, but it turns out that "not thinking" about things isn't as easy as it used to be. 

Instead, Woody spends the whole ride back to the base dissecting past interactions with people and seeing all of the "Frustration" and "Exasperation" and "Dismissal" that he hadn't noticed before. 

He doesn't like it. 

He wishes that he hadn't noticed. That he had been able to ignore it and not see any of it, because now he can't stop thinking about it all. 

Do people actually like  _him_ now? Or do they just like the helmet?

Because apparently, people hadn't like him before the helmet. Woody had known that before, of course, but it was almost like he hadn't really  _known_ it. 

Now he does, and he knows that the only thing that's really different is the helmet. Some things have changed, but Woody isn't all that different under all the alien tech that's helping him out now. If people hadn't liked him before, but they like him now, then they can't really like him, they like the helmet. 

It makes him feel kind of sick and lightheaded when he thinks about it like that. He had felt like he was part of the team, but maybe he isn't. Maybe he's only part of the team because he's the part that holds the helmet up. 

He tries to think about something else while he's sitting in a hospital room while the doctor talks about things like feeding tubes, but fails. They let him go back to the barracks to join the others, and he thinks about keeping his thoughts to himself, but Woody still doesn't remember to think about what he says before he says it most of the time, and so it's late and they're supposed to be asleep when Woody just blurts it all out, and thinks that at least the helmet helps him with words because he doesn't think he'd be able to repeat himself when he feels this bad. 

He doesn't really know what he's expecting the others to say to him. He's bracing himself for the worst, but he's still not expecting Herman to just start laughing at him. 

"Man, that helmet really hasn't changed much," the older man says, "You're still a fucking idiot." 

Hagan reaches up from the bottom bunk to shove him. "Be nice," he hisses, and then turns to face Woody's bunk. "Woody, all of us are part of the team because we're the things that hold the pieces." 

"Not me," Zach interrupts, "I'm part of the team because I'm fucking awesome." 

"Kid, shut up," Hagan snaps back, "Look, Woody, don't worry. We don't just like you because of the helmet, you were an okay kid even before all of this happened."

"Yeah moron, you think I was friends with you all this time just because I knew you were gonna stick that thing on your head?" Herman asks, and Woody says "No" at the same time Hagan says, "Can you say anything to him without insulting him?" 

But Herman has a point, and the helmet reviews Herman and Hagan from before and Woody sees things like "Protective" and "Kinship" and "Paternal" and decides that they're right, and the sick nervous feeling in his stomach goes away enough that he's able to sleep even though the helmet is kind of uncomfortable to lie down in. It's easier not to dwell on things with reassurances like those. 

It turns out that spaceships meant for long term space travel take a lot of time to prepare, and the others get down time while Woody gets scheduled for minor surgery so that he doesn't have to worry about starving to death since the helmet doesn't come off and the visor doesn't open (and Woody wants to ask the aliens who designed  _that_ , "What the fuck?")

It's not as bad as it could be though, and time goes on and Woody gets more used to that and the helmet, but he does still think about "Before" sometimes. 

Mostly it's the simple things; being able to play with his hair, or brush his teeth, or eat actual food, but other times it's more complicated than that. 

The helmet let him know that he has (had?) an intellectual disability, and it's weird to figure out what that means and think about how none of it had been his fault. It wasn't that he didn't try hard enough or that he was goofing off too much, it was his brain that was the issue the whole time. 

Woody kind of misses it. 

He doesn't really miss being "stupid", not understanding or being understood, he doesn't miss that. He doesn't know how to explain it, even with the helmet on there are still some things he can't put into words, and this is one of them. Things are a lot of the same, but the helmet had changed things a lot too. Woody doesn't really know how to explain what he misses, but he knows that he had been that way his entire life, it was who he was. And now he's not, not exactly, and the change leaves him with a sort of unsettled feeling under his skin. 

He had been that way his entire life. It had been who he was. Who is he now? What does he do now? Where does he go from here?

Woody doesn't know. 

But sometimes he sees "Homesick" on Hagan's face, and "Lost" on Zach's, and "Reminiscence" on Herman's, and feels a little better knowing that at least he's not the only one who feels kind of weird about how things are going. 

Sometimes things are confusing and unsettling, but they'd always been that way for him, and some of it gets easier as time goes on. 

After Woody's stomach is healed enough, their break is declared over and they're sent back to work on physical training and battle simulations. They're chaotic and loud, and they all spend a lot of time tripping over one another as they try to make things work. Hagan especially winds up accidentally getting in Woody's way a lot of the time, trying to keep him from getting hurt since he's the skinniest and he still doesn't have a weapon and they're all still worried about the tube even though the doctors and the helmet all say that physical activity is fine, but they're getting better at it. 

Not good enough for the military though, and so they all get yelled at a lot, and it's after one of these shouting sessions, when the drill sergeant had to go cool down because it started to look like he was going to punch one of them, that Zach gets kind of quiet before he turns to Woody and asks, "Did your parents ever hit you?"

Out of the corner of his visor, Woody can see Herman and Hagan go stiff and angry. Zach doesn't seem to notice that they can hear. Instead he's looking equal parts "Expectant" and "Anxious" at Woody, waiting for an answer. 

And Woody thinks of his mom and "Frustration-Derision-Helplessness", and also of the bruises on Zach the night after the fight, and says, "Yeah, sometimes," and pretends not to notice how Herman and Hagan stiffen more, direct opposites of how Zach relaxes slightly, and nods like it makes sense. Or like maybe he just gets it. 

"Parents are dicks," he declares. 

Woody can't find it hard to agree. 

He mostly tries not to think about his mom anymore, but as time goes on and the military people figure out that he's not more intelligent like they'd thought he was, he sees faces like hers around him a lot more often. Before it had been the same "Disbelief-Exasperation" that the other three got, now it's sometimes angrier, like they've been disappointed. 

Woody is used to disappointing people, but he still doesn't like it. 

It had been easier to shrug off before, when Woody was better at not-seeing things and other people were better at not expecting things from him, or ignoring him most of the time. Here he doesn't get be ignored. He has a mission, they say, and he doesn't get a choice in this any more than they do. 

"You're the only one without a weapon," one of the officers says, "If you get separated from the others, you need to know how to defend yourself." 

Woody tries to keep up in their lessons, tries to mimic the movements and deliver the force, but he isn't very good at it. He tries, but his mind keeps flicking back to bloodied knuckles and fake leather seats and words like "Dangerous" and "Twisted" and it feels like breaking rules. He doesn't like it. 

But Woody isn't good at standing up for himself, or explaining things, so he doesn't say anything to the increasingly more frustrated officer. 

The woman tries to be patient, Woody can tell, as she shows him the moves over and over. He feels like he isn't doing so bad, but he can't do it right apparently, since he never manages to beat her when she makes them spar. It doesn't help that she looks a lot like his mom and has the same "Impatience" as her too, and Woody is used to just taking it when it's his mom, but all of that frustrates this woman even more. 

"I've  _never_ had a student as incompetent as you," she tells him, face flushed and lip curled, "Even the other three have this shit down by now." 

Woody has never really done anything on pace with other people. 

"You'll get it eventually," Herman says, clapping an arm around Woody's shoulder reassuringly. 

Woody doesn't know how to explain that he doesn't really want to get it, and wonders if the small frown on Hagan's face means that the other man is also wondering why Woody can't punch right if he had gotten it good the first time that they'd met. 

The woman that had been teaching him quits, and Woody almost hopes that means that he gets to stop before he meets the man that's taking over for her. 

_He_ doesn't bother with trying to teach technique like the woman had, he goes straight for a brawl. He pulls his punches only slightly and avoids Woody's G-Tube, but otherwise seems determined to bully Woody into fighting back. 

What's worst is that it might be working. 

It  _hurts_ , and it's frustrating because Woody keeps trying to get back up off the ground and the man keeps shoving him back before he can get his limbs under him right. Plus, he keeps on  _shouting_ and it's getting harder and harder for Woody to think or focus, because the helmet helps but it still has limits, and he can feel anxiety pooling in his chest because he isn't sure if he's going to be able to control himself for much longer. 

And it's close, it's so close. The man shakes Woody by the helmet and calls him a "Retard" and Woody's hand clenches into a fist right before Zach is suddenly there, shoving the man back and punching him straight across the face with the laser canon, and Woody feels that Anger dissolve into Shock as he squawks in surprise, and then he hurriedly calls for Hagan and Herman before the instructor can recover from where he's doubled over, dazed and trying unsuccessfully to staunch a bloody nose. 

"What the fuck, kid?" Hagan's voice shouts over the cacophony of noise in Woody's head, and Zach doesn't move from where he's stood between the officer and Woody, and just shrugs, not seeming guilty or regretful at all. 

"He was shoving Woody around, and he called him a retard. He deserved it," he explains bluntly, and Woody shrinks a bit at the word again. He feels like maybe he should be used to it by now, but he definitely _definitely_ isn't. 

"Good call," Herman says to Zach and then turns to Woody, "You alright?" 

Woody is shaking and bruised, but is mostly relieved. He nods, and Herman nods back. 

"Yeah, alright," Hagan says, "Fuck this self-defense shit, this isn't working. Tell your boss or whatever to go fuck themselves." 

They leave the still bleeding officer in the gym, and go to the mess hall so that the others can eat, and Woody sits and watches them and tries to breathe because he'd fucked it up and he still can't do what they want him to do, and he knows that it's important to know how to fight because that's what they're going to space for, and to make matters worse, Zach is probably going to get in trouble for hitting that guy and it's all Woody's fault. 

"Woody," Hagan says, and Woody jerks his head up to meet the man's eyes and is surprised to have to blink a bit of blurry-wetness out of his vision, "Calm down. I don't know why you're so nervous about this fighting thing, but you don't have to worry about it. It's not your job to be on the front lines anyway, we fight and you help us from the background. Don't worry about it, just stay close to us and we've got your back."

The military people would probably say that it's not that easy, that there's no guarantees, but Woody doesn't really think about any of that. He feels mostly like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, and he nods and smiles easily, tears forgotten. He doesn't think that all of this is really over, but Hagan is right. Woody doesn't have to face it head on by himself, he's got a team now. 

He gets the feeling that the military only lets it slide because they're tired of having to deal with the four of them, but Woody isn't going to complain. They stop focusing on individual technique and start emphasizing team efforts. Woody winds up spending most of his time stood behind Zach to help him aim, since the other boy still isn't good at getting dead-on shots without the helmet's help, and they actually start to improve. The others are familiar with working as part of a team, and Woody has always done better with help from other people. 

The military stops looking so much like "Disappointment" and starts looking more like "Approval" just in time for the space program to be cleared for launch. 

"Are you ready for this?" Hagan asks, staring up at the sheer size of the ship in "Dread-Anticipation".

Woody thinks about it for a moment, and then shrugs and says, "Nope," smiling cheerfully and not feeling particularly bad about that. 

It doesn't really make sense at all; four small town idiots off to tackle the galaxy, but things feel like they've somehow fallen into place anyway. 

Woody doesn't really understand, but that's alright.

He's used to that. 

**Author's Note:**

> As with all of my fics that feature disability-heavy themes, feel free to ask any questions!!  
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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